The Twenty-Seventh Sunday after Pentecost

November 16, 2008

by The Rev. Constance Jones

Matthew 25-24-30

One problem with really familiar parables that Jesus told to his disciples
is that we think we already know what they mean.
The parable of the talents for example.
You are given by your Maker certain resources in this life,
and only so much time in which to use them – it clearly says.
Use them, spend them, make them a judicious investment,
so that the return you show at the end of your life pleases God.

I was well on my way to this very sermon in fact.
Pointing out the lavish generosity of the master,
who went away and promised to come back (as Jesus did).
Who gave to his servants great sums of money they did not earn
(as God gives us all we have).
Who gave them no instructions as to what to do with the money
(and doesn't it seem that way in life, that there is no instruction manual?).

The first two servants in some unnamed way doubled the value.
The third servant buried his money in the ground,
neither investing it nor losing it.
Then the day of reckoning comes.

Is this Jesus teaching capitalist investment, I was going to say?
Hardly, since the money plus profits goes back to the Master.
And anyway, we know about Jesus' preference
for pretty much giving away all your money to the poor.

Besides, I would say, this parable is only tangentially about money,
which in the story stands for all God has given us.
The span of our lives, and the gifts we have –
musical or artistic talent, or a special patience for troubled children or broken cars.
We are given also opportunities –
to be parents, to do volunteer work, to develop our souls' relationship with God.
How well will we use them?
This might have been an OK sermon,
because I believe everything I've just said.

But four things happened along the way to the completion of this sermon.

First of all, I got interested in the burying of the talents the 3rd servant did.
What does that mean?
It must result from fear – that the Master, that God, is stingy and wrathful.
We may bury our talents when we fear we will fail, or be punished,
or that we will lose everything.
How many times do we do this, I was thinking? --
hoarding our talents and making nothing of them because we're afraid.

The second thing that happened was that I saw an amazing video
shot at the Tomb of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem,
where Greek Orthodox and Armenian monks,
dressed (and I am not making this up) in red versus blue robes,
engaged in a brawl over who would get to control access
to the tomb where Jesus supposedly is buried.
Wow! I thought,
These monks aren't just burying their money in the ground to control it.
They're trying to get control of Jesus.
But then, isn't that sometimes the way with churches --
battling to control right doctrine, control membership,
hoard their church buildings,
be "righter" than the church down the street.
I shuddered.

The next day Liz Landgraf and I paid a visit
to a residence for people who have Alzheimer's.
We sang, we preached, we made Eucharist, we socialized a little –
with gentle folks from whom, quite literally,
nearly everything nearly everything has been taken away.

    (As an aside I think I'd say, in tune with today's parable,
    that these folks had "invested" wisely in church-going in the past,
    because many were familiar with the words of the hymns, the responses,
    and above all with the simple act of reaching out to receive Christ.)

But I saw so plainly that our destiny on this earth
is the very opposite of the accumulation
of wealth, or things, or power, or even relationships.
At the end of the day, which of course may come at any time,
we lose everything except
what we have invested back in God.

Then Friday I ran across an essay in an old copy of Christian Century –
about a parish in lower Manhattan
whose historic landmark church lost the demographics sweepstakes, so to speak.
There used to be Episcopalians in the neighborhood,
but times and populations changed.
Holy Apostles is a huge church with vaulted ceilings and priceless stained glass,
but by the early ‘80s the congregation of about 200
couldn't afford the maintenance any longer.
So the Rector said to the congregation, "If Holy Apostles is going out of business,
it might as well do some good before it does."

So they started a free lunch program.
No questions asked, just lunch for anybody.
It started small, but soon the parish hall was bursting at the seams.
Then, when a fire broke out during roof repairs, causing damage to the nave,
the church was at a cross roads.
The insurance money could be used in a variety of ways.

It must have been tempting, I think, even natural,
to restore everything to its former glory.
It is indeed a beautiful historic church.

But did Holy Apostles vestry and people think
that careful restoration might be like burying their talent?
I don't know.
What they did, though, was to remove the pews altogether,
in favor of movable chairs and tables,
so that Monday through Friday, they could serve lunch in the huge nave.
Parish Eucharist on Sundays;
Monday through Friday, lunches for anybody who is hungry.
They currently serve about 1100 people a day.

And........they haven't gone out of business after all. They've grown.
They haven't eradicated poverty,
but they've taken a bold step
in obeying Jesus' commandment to his disciples to "feed my sheep."
The people of Holy Apostles are apostles
who have invested what they were given –
their nave, their location, the fire, the needy people in their community,
in a faithful response to Christ.
Being fed in Christ's body and blood, they turn to feed the hungry.

The article in Christian Century concludes with this musing,

"Maybe the world would find churches more interesting and compelling if they showed something of the love of Jesus in their lives and practices. Maybe there is no more important and life-giving strategy for every church than finding something Christlike to do."¹

The parable of the talents is not about accumulating wealth.
Nor is it about taking what we value
and guarding it like a miser,
so that it will not deteriorate, change, or leave our grasp.

It is about first, being grateful for all we have been freely given by God.
Then listening for the guidance of God in using, investing,
and risking it for holy purposes.
This is our charge, both as individuals,
and as the Body of Christ in our parishes.

I feel confident in saying that Grace Church,
here in a historic village on a dead-end street,
is not called to establish a soup kitchen.
Nor are we close to shutting down.

But we are at a crossroads.

What do you think the "talents" are that God has given us?
What is God asking us to do with them?
What, at this stage of our history,
would be the equivalent of "burying" those talents?
What choices would we make
if we were ruled by fear or the desire to control?
On the other hand, how could we most resemble those first two servants,
who invested what they had wisely,
and then were rewarded with still more responsibility by the Master?

This is not a matter of pleasing ourselves, you know,
or keeping what we make.
It never has been.
You and I will only be here for a while longer.
We may end up in an Alzheimer's unit, or we may be felled in some other way.
You and I are, so to speak, going to go out of business one of these days.
So before then we might as well do something Christlike in this place.

It is not given to us to know the number of our days.
But in the space between when God made us in his image,
and when he will call us back to himself,
we have a calling.
It's not to bury what we are given,
nor, please Jesus, is it to engage in brawls and fistfights in church.
Rather, it is to invest what we are given for God's glory and God's purposes.

We have a choices in our own lives,
and as the Body of Christ in this place.
What shall we do?

¹ John Buchanan, "Something Christlike," Christian Century, July 29, 2008, 3. Buchanan is reflecting on a longer article was written by Ian Frazier in The New Yorker.